We talk a lot about pre-sale revenue. After all, it’s one of the best ways to guarantee business into your venue, predict your revenue and profit for a night, and even cover your expenses before your night begins. What’s more is with pre-sale inventory, you’re able to collect more information about your guests since most of the purchases are done online through e-commerce. Consumers are now conditioned to provide information in exchange for an online purchase, and all of that information and data can be used to increase your marketing efforts and improve your overall business results.
Pre-sale revenue truly is a win for your business and it’s one of the easiest processes to set up. Just follow these steps.
How to Set Up Your Pre-Sale Revenue Process
1. Identify the inventory you have to sell ahead of time. It can be table reservations, cover charges, tickets, drink packages, or whatever else you may have.
2. Determine how much of each item you’re able to sell, and associate a price to each item. Each item might even have multiple prices based on the timing. For example, you might have tickets to an event. You can have early bird tickets available a month before the event at $50, which changes to advanced tickets two weeks before the event for $60, which changes to general admission the week before the event at $70, which changes to door ticket for $80 the night of the event. This incentivizes guests to buy early and also brings more revenue to you for those that don’t.
3. Make your inventory available. You may need to partner with a ticketing company like Vēmos to process pre-sale transactions. Make sure to either have a landing page dedicated to your pre-sale inventory (like an event page), or have it integrated into your own website.
4. Market your pre-sale items. Have your promoters drive customers to buy either online or directly through them through a mobile app. Use social media to engage with your customers or advertise to new ones. Send an email campaign or text messages to your best customers to get them to buy early.
5. Strategize your lines the night of to show further benefits of buying early. Make sure your pre-sale line moves faster than your walk-up line to thank your pre-sale guests for buying ahead of time and to show other guests the value of doing so.
6. Measure your results and make goals for next time. Know what marketing efforts worked and which didn’t. Know which items sold and which didn’t. Repeat and enhance the initiatives that worked and table the ones that didn’t to continue to grow your efforts and increase your revenue.
Whitney Larson is the director of marketing at Vēmos. Contact her at whitney.larson@vemos.io or fill out the form below.
